Sharpton, de Blasio slam ‘white privilege’ of snow

NEW YORK — New York Mayor Bill de Blasio appeared at a joint press conference with Al Sharpton late Monday night to reassure New York City residents that the full resources of the city will be mobilized to ensure that what they called the “blanket of white privilege” due to envelope the city Tuesday does not unfairly profile minority areas of the city.

“We are on alert for any signs of ‘disparate impact’ on African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods,” said de Blasio. “So in addition to thousands of sanitation workers and maintenance crews, hundreds of teams of community organizers are being deployed to potentially vulnerable areas.”

“Rich, white-majority areas have better roads and amenities, so they are better able to cope with this sort of storm,” continued the mayor. “So although the actual amount of snow falling may be the same in all areas, it will have a disparate impact on minority areas. In effect, you could say that those areas are being profiled, or deliberately targeted.”

“In addition, our teams have been advised to look out especially for the appearance of snowmen in minority communities, and snowballs being thrown at people of color, which may in fact be an attempt to impose white norms of appearance,” de Blasio added.

Sharpton told reporters that his activists would also be on the streets. “Wealthy white areas like the Upper East Side are already so white that a few feet more of white stuff don’t [sic] hurt them, it just helps to disguise their whiteness,” he told reporters. “But black folks, they stand out more in the snow, which means they is [sic] statisticatally [sic] more likely to be stopped and subjected to a cavity search by racist white cops.”

After the press conference, a small band of protesters carrying placards with slogans such as “Whiteout? No, whites out” and “Hands up don’t snow” attempted to block a section of the Long Island Expressway. However, it was already closed due to the weather.